At The Atlantic, Matthew O'Brien wrote a great piece marshaling 5 datapoints in favor of the Chinese hard landing scenario. Among them: The collapse in loan growth, electricity usage, and rail cargo. All are falling sharply. What's more, he notes, the stimulus chatter is starting to get very loud.

We've been talking about the big Euro-led slowdown for awhile, but now there's another one: The economy is cracking all over the world in places that were assumed to be great growth engines, and right now the US economy (which isn't growing like gangbusters, but which is kind of hanging in there) is looking like the strongest of the lot, and the Fed appears to have the least pressure on it to ease, which helps explain why currencies around the world are collapsing against the dollar.